Summer roads open up before us, a brilliant blue sky dropping a background to ignite white puffy clouds hanging low in the distance. Having just returned from a whirlwind trip to New York with Suzie and Chris, I’m spent and offering this weekly recap without further explanation. 

We took the rain.

The place with the yellow flowers.

A preponderance of pink.

Things my 47-year-old body can no longer handle. 

My Top Twenty Madonna timelines.

Downtown roses.

All these Junes on the first of July.

All lace, no leather.

Summer Love Hangover.

Striking summer poses of the past.

Dazzlers of the Day included Sandra Bernhard, J. Harrison Ghee, Dan Amboyer, Sidharth Malhotra, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Neil Patrick Harris.

Someone posted this quote on social media the other day, and for a Monday morning that kicks off a holiday work-week, it’s a worthy reminder of priorities. My Saturday was spent seeing lifelong friends in New York, and it was a recollection of what our youthful passions and goals were, juxtaposed with the ailments and complaints and survival stories of what the past two decades have wrought. It was also soul-enriching, and a pleasant reprioritization of what feeds our mental health. In my case, that’s not rushing to get every single done as soon as it comes up. 

Most of us who take pride in our work and career try to excel and please, in as quick and urgent a way as possible. That’s not a way to make for a lasting sense of fulfillment in a working environment, and I’ve slowly come to see that over the past few years. There are many instances when there is a serious need for immediate action. We like to pretend there is, but that state of frantic rushing when anyone in charge wants something is a false urgency – a contrived and self-created mode of working that more often than not ends up with more errors and mis-steps than if we slowed down to analyze and take our time and care in executing things properly, and working within calm conditions. 

A lot of us do the same thing in our personal lives, and in our relationships and friendships, wanting to rush and immediately fix or solve or address things the minute they come up. We tend to make decisions and take action in the heat of the moment rather than pause and consider what’s really going on. In my youth, I made my fair share of those urgent decisions, of rushing to get something resolved or finished at the expense of letting it evolve or improve, and perhaps losing out on things that might have ripened into much more. 

Summer feels like a good time to slow things down, to re-learn and refine the way we’ve been hurrying through life and missing the moments around us. On this Monday morning maybe we can begin to shift that way of thinking. To that end, our usual weekly recap that appears early every Monday will show up a little later today. All good things to those who wait… 

Ah vanity, my unfair and familiar friend/fiend. Your work has made a mucky mess of my perceived reception in the world yet you keep me coming back for more. Here we travel back in time, to a summer spent lounging by the pool, striking all-too-serious poses or simply squinting from the sun. Life is too often a happy accident or unintended joke, and the best way to traverse its tricky path is to laugh it off whenever possible – and there is always the possibility for a laugh. It’s taken a few years, and some arduous work within, but I’m easily able to laugh at myself now – and there is much to find funny. 

Included in the items I now find humorous are pictures like this, in which I did my Zoolander best to find the perfect scowl that looked both effortless and meaningful, and somehow ended up merely appearing utterly ridiculous. Turns out that’s a good look for practically anybody – we are, after all, just a pile of neurotic habits – and everyone feels better when we feel less alone. 

As for these pics, along with the chuckles that Speedo-preening produces, I’m remembering certain summer days when all there was to do was sit beside the pool and read and watch the sun languidly move across the sky. Back then we would bask in the heat and light, commune with the bees and butterflies, sip iced tea and lemonade, slip into the cool water, and repeat. It feels so far away, and still so familiar – the way summer usually works. I remind myself to simply give in to it, to let it splash all over and not worry about any mess. We’re all a little messy, and that’s ok – especially in the summer. 

All too briskly, June has bonded toward its end and we have already arrived at the start of July. Summer moves quickly and waits for no one. That doesn’t mean I won’t try to still its march and slow its roll. Hence this post, which looks back the Junes that came before. I’m not quite ready to let go of that glorious month, and at only thirty days it feels like we owe it one more. That January gets thirty-one seems criminal if it could have been tacked on here. 

June 2010: Thirteen years is a long time – revisiting this June feels remote and lovely. 

June 2011: Recent Supreme Court rulings have many of us rightfully concerned about marriage equality, which means we might be going back to 2011, and before. 

June 2012: Pride was all the rage in June, and happily it remains so.

June 2013: The best Junes are often those in which nothing but summer happens. 

June 2014: Summer vacations and Tom Daley in a Speedo.

June 2015: Flowers and frills and more flowers.

June 2016: Summer salads and nakedness and movies. 

June 2017: Sunsets, Speedos and sweet summer perfumes.

June 2018: We took this summer off, but it still had some good entries.

June 2019: Boston in the summer and days by the pool.

June 2020: Foodstuff, flowers and fluff.

June 2021: Olympic glory, dazzlers and Madonna.

June 2022: A shepherd’s pie of summer posts.